He sprinted east, pumping his arms and legs against the dread in his chest. After a mile, on the outskirts of the village, he stopped to ease his swelling wildness and his lungs. With shaking hands, he dialed Nadya’s cell phone again and listened through her message. Never before had his wife’s voice pained him like this.
“Call me.” Arif searched for more to say. “Please. Call me.”
He dashed the second mile. The clinic had been built inside the blockhouse of a run-down and isolated fueling station, near the palm groves on the edge of the desert. Shaykh Qasim had provided the funds; Nadya oversaw the renovation. The small building stood on a stark, narrow lane. Though the building was dark and had no outside lighting, the pickup truck sat in the tiny lot, its driver-side door open and an interior bulb burning.
He galloped to the truck, putting hands on it to stop himself. Panting hard, Arif picked Nadya’s keys out of the dirt beneath the opened door. He searched the cab’s bench seat and floorboards but found no other signs of her. Nadya’s backpack was missing, no cell phone, no more clues.
Arif checked the clinic door: locked as it should be. She’d closed the building at dusk, walked to the truck, opened the car door, and disappeared. Something violent made her drop her keys. On his knees, he glanced beneath the truck. A dark rag had been balled and thrown or kicked under. Grabbing it, Arif sniffed, sensing nothing of her. The kerchief was not Nadya’s.
He stood back to take it all in. Every second added to the distance between them, swelling his dread. He jumped in the truck, slammed the door, and started the engine.
As the truck swung around to enter the road, the headlamps swept across two ebon forms squatting beside the clinic. Both stood, women, one taller than the other, fully cloaked by burqas, black gloves, and socks.
Arif braked. The women stood motionless in his headlights. Arif got out and reached back into the truck to shut the lights off, to allow the women the concealment of darkness.
“Did you see what happened here?”
Neither answered.
“She’s my wife. Did you see something?”
He held out his arms. He’d not yet put the weapon down, it filled one hand.
“Anything.”
The shorter of the women, perhaps an elder, towed the taller figure by her gloved hand out of the beams, away into the open night. Arif called at their backs.
“I beg you. What did you see?”
The taller woman stopped. Against the tug of the other, she pointed north, toward the desert.
Arif braked at the foot of Ghalib’s high adobe wall. Before he realized it, he was on his feet, shaking the locked metal gate. Arif scaled back his wrath long enough to think how to climb the wall.
Stuffing the pistol into his waistband, he stepped up into the bed of the pickup to climb onto the cab’s roof. Arif leaped for the top of the wall. He caught it only with his fingertips and let go, loudly crunching the roof of his truck.
Before he could jump again, two men leading a mule cart rounded the corner into the lane. Arif did nothing to duck out of sight. The men stopped closer to the truck. The elder of the pair walked forward, raising a lantern.
“What are you doing?”
Arif showed him the Makarov.
“Go away.”
The men and the mule did not budge. A weapon in Yemen was common; no one cowered from them here.
The old man held the lantern higher.
“Should I shout the alarm?”
Arif had only murder in mind, but not for two innocent men.
“I’m going to enter the house of Ghalib Tujjar Ba-Jalal.”
“Why do you go like this? Are you a thief?”
“I’m going to kill him.”
Shadows from the lamplight shifted on the old man’s features as he tilted his head. “What did he do?”
“He kidnapped my wife.”
“How do you know this?”
“He threatened it. And it has been done.”
The man stepped nearer the pickup, raising the lantern to see Arif better.
“Truly?”
“Truly.”
“Is it tha’r?” A revenge killing.
“Yes.”
The old one kept the lantern high while he studied Arif from below. His tongue worked inside his cheeks, behind his gray beard. In the light, the man was not so old and blue-eyed. He pointed to the big house behind the wall.
“You know who he is? This family, the Bayt Ba-Jalal?”
“I know very well.”
The old man squinted. “You have killed before?”
“A long time ago.”
“So you understand?”
“Yes.”
Slowly, the man inclined his head to Arif as if in the presence of someone exalted.
“Insha’Allah.” If God wills.
He turned to gesture the younger one forward. This man came leading the mule. The elder took the animal by the bridle while the younger man stepped onto the pickup truck bed. He was burly and the truck’s springs sagged under him. He bent, clasping his hands to make a step. The old man shook the lantern at Arif.
“Up you go, then.”
Arif tucked the pistol in his jeans. He rested one foot in the man’s big hands, braced on his shoulders, and with a heave was boosted high enough to lap his wrists over the wall. The big man in the truck pushed on the heels of Arif’s sneakers to shove him higher. Arif pulled himself up to straddle Ghalib’s wall. In the street below, the two men and mule walked on with their lantern. Arif slid both legs over the wall, hung by his arms, then dropped.
Shreds of light from the house lit the courtyard. The only glow came from windows in the rear of the first floor where the kitchen would be, and from the top, third floor. Undiscovered inside the walls, Arif paused to check his rage and resolve. The old man had been clever and right to ask him if he’d killed before, if he understood what it meant and what it took. Years ago in war, first in defense of Allah, then of his comrades, Arif had felt this gravity to violence, the downward slope toward killing. As then, he saw no path other than this, the short distance to Ghalib’s door. Arif returned the weight of the Makarov to his hand.
He moved to the thick portal and knocked several times, hard.
Just as it had five days before, an unseen woman’s voice filtered down to him.
“Who is it?”
“Arif the Saudi. I need to speak with Ghalib Tujjar Ba-Jalal.”
He was left without a reply. Through open windows overhead came bustling and women’s calls inside the house, until the voice returned.
“With respect, the sayyid says he will speak with you tomorrow.”
“It’s urgent.”
“Tomorrow, please.”
Arif lifted the iron latch. The door didn’t budge.
He receded from the door into the dim courtyard. Arif lifted a flowerpot off a stone table. He peeled back the shutters from a window beside the front door and threw the earthen pot. Panes and mullions shattered, spilling into the house. Arif snapped away the smashed bits of wood and glass to hoist himself over the sill.
Inside he stood in a murky foyer on shards, dirt, and petals. Two young girls in white robes squealed, then darted into a darkened hall, flurrying like fleeing ghosts.
Down the staircase, a woman’s voice screeched, “Sir, no! No!”
Arif took the steps two at a time. Above him scattering females shouted curses on Arif, “Haram ’alaykum!” and banged doors shut. He held the Makarov out like a searchlight, looking for Ghalib. He listened through the chaos for a man’s voice, a man’s footfalls.
On the second-floor landing, a woman opened a door wide enough to hurl a shoe at him, then disappeared. Arif coursed up the stairs to the top floor and the mabraz where Ghalib might be chewing qat after the evening meal.
A shadow drifted across the pillowed floor of the mabraz. Arif gave himself over to Allah and the rightness of vengeance. Gun first, he lunged through the doorway.
Ghalib’s African akhdam had his arm cocked to throw a jar of tobacco leaves. Arif surged; the glass sailed close to his head. He grabbed the servant by the blouse, pulling him off balance. The old black man collapsed to his knees. The hookah was lit and smoldering.
Arif yanked the old man upright, cramming their faces close.
“Where is he?”
The akhdam whimpered that he didn’t know, a plain lie. Arif slapped him to make him cry out, then tossed the old man onto the cushions.
Arif stood in the hallway before the mabraz. He bellowed into the house to be heard above the shrieking on the floors below.
“Ghalib Tujjar Ba-Jalal! Will you run from your house and leave me with your women?”
Bare feet thudded on the stairwell below. Arif flung himself down the staircase to the second-floor landing. Ahead of him, a skinny teenage girl scampered along the dark hall with a terrified glance over her shoulder. Arif whirled to confront an attractive, raven-haired wife in a yellow housedress, her escape thwarted. Behind her shrank an adolescent girl in a cotton gown and bare arms. A small boy wearing short pants peeked around her skirt.
The woman bared white teeth.
“Turn your face!”
Arif averted his eyes while she shepherded the children into a room off the hall. When they were gone, a touch of fury overcame him. He turned a circle screaming Ghalib’s name into the whole house.
The door where the woman had retreated opened. Ghalib emerged into the hall and clicked the door behind him. He wore the same emerald robe and naked chest as before, without the rich man’s grin. Facing Arif he blinked repeatedly, shoulders turned as if he might bolt back into the room. He stammered something.
With Ghalib suddenly in front of the gun, a vivid image from decades past asserted itself, an interrogation of a Russian about a massacre; the Soviets had gassed an entire Afghan village. Arif should never have been given the task of questioner; he was too enraged. He’d shot the soldier in the middle of the man’s first word. Now, as Ghalib opened his mouth, Arif searched for the clarity not to kill this sputtering kalb, this dog, in the same fashion.
Arif leaped, ramming him backward against the door, rattling it, making the women behind it yelp.
“Where is my wife?”
Ghalib gawped for words. Arif crushed him again against the door.
“Where?”
“Arif. Arif. Stay calm. I don’t know anything about this.”
Arif pushed the Makarov into Ghalib’s eye socket. The old vision of the Russian soldier departed; Ghalib had already lived longer than him.
“I won’t ask again.”
A tremor flowed through the gun muzzle pressed to the man’s head. Ghalib sputtered more.
“Please, Arif. Upstairs. Please. Away from the women and children.”
Arif eased the pistol enough to follow him up the steps. He held the gun between the man’s silken, shaking shoulder blades. Behind Arif, the household’s gabbling women flooded down the stairs, outdoors into the courtyard.
Arif marched Ghalib to the mabraz. He pushed him down beside the old servant, who had not left. Arif told the black man to get out. The servant scuttled down the stairs without a backward look.
Arif aimed the Makarov at Ghalib’s heart. Ghalib would be found dead the way he’d lived, reclining on his cushions.
“Talk.”
“You have to believe me. I don’t know anything about your wife.”
Every second Arif did not act added to the distance between him and Nadya, and to his own peril; the wives and children outside the house wailed at the tops of their lungs for police, neighbors, anyone to come.
“What did you do with the information I gave you?”
Ghalib licked his lips, blinking faster, concocting a story.
“Good-bye, Ghalib. Shaitan waits for you.”
Ghalib scrambled backward over the pillows, into the wall, kicking away from the Makarov. He thrust out an arm.
“Wait, wait. Arif, I’ll tell you. Wait. Please.”
Arif lowered to both knees but kept the pistol leveled. Beside Ghalib, the water pipe smoldered, a samovar steamed. The room had been prepared for his luxury.
“Speak fast. If you hesitate, I know you’re lying. What did you do with the thumb drive?”
Ghalib hung halfway up the wall, pinned there.
“Yes, all right. A moment.”
He eased down to the cushions. Ghalib closed the robe over his chest while he crossed his legs under him. Unexpectedly, his fright moved aside and he now seemed committed to something beyond his fear: either telling the truth or dying well arranged. Ghalib blew out his cheeks while he gazed into his own lap. He managed a measure of cool and asked the same from Arif.
“Please stay calm.”
“I can kill you calmly.”
Ghalib raised both palms, a fending gesture.
“I sent the information on, as I promised. The suggestion was made that more could be done with it than simply embarrass the Al Saud.”
Behind his lifted hands, Ghalib paused. Arif prodded with his voice and the gun.
“And?”
“It was decided to kill the prince.”
“What?”
Killing Abd al-Aziz had never been mentioned. Even with scores to settle, Arif had not thought it.
Arif threatened again with the Makarov, thrusting as though it were a knife. Ghalib kept talking. He filled in the details, briefly and speedily, as Arif had demanded. Within days, a wanted Saudi bomb maker named Walid Samir bin Rajab was recruited to take the thumb drive to the prince’s home in Riyadh, use it to gain entry, then detonate the bomb in his presence.
Arif listened, incredulous; his hand slacked on the pistol. He caught himself and firmed the gun. Ghalib responded by aiming a finger back.
“I told you. You weren’t thinking big enough. You only wanted to publish it. This was a much greater strike at the Al Saud.”
“At my wife’s father.”
Ghalib turned the finger to himself.
“I am al-Qaeda. You knew this when you gave Abd al-Aziz to me.”
“I didn’t give him to you.”
Ghalib sat up straighter, nearer to the Makarov.
“A Muslim may kill another Muslim for three reasons. If that man has killed another wrongly. If he is married and fornicates outside his marriage. If he deserts the Prophet and fights against Islam. You yourself have said Abd al-Aziz has done all three. Don’t act the child, Arif. You know the hadiths. You know we had the right to kill him.”
“He’s not dead.”
This rocked Ghalib. His jaw dropped. Before he could speak, Arif surged forward off his knees to wrap a hand around the man’s throat. He drove Ghalib onto his back, squeezing his windpipe, screwing the barrel of the Makarov into his ribs.
“The prince is alive. He has my wife. Now listen to me.”
Ghalib, with reddening cheeks and bulging eyes, nodded.
“She’s been kidnapped. Exactly what you threatened. Tell me what happened to her. Then I’ll decide if you live.”
Released, Ghalib sat up to rub his flabby neck. The blood remained in his face. He croaked.
“How do you know Abd al-Aziz is alive?”
“He sent me a message on my computer.”
“When?”
“Twenty minutes ago. He said he’d taken Nadya. Then he called my cell phone to say he was going to kill me, and hung up. I ran to t
he clinic. Her truck was still there. She’s gone.”
“Anything else?”
“There’d been a struggle. Two women must have been at the clinic late and saw what happened. They stayed by the truck to tell someone. When I got there, one pointed to the road north, into the desert.”
“Bin Rajab failed.”
Arif wagged his head. Ghalib had failed.
“Why did you do it?”
Ghalib shrugged, as if surprised at himself. Probably this was the boldest thing he’d done in his life. Arif had no faith that this was the blood vow Ghalib claimed against America. This pampered bit of dung had sacrificed Arif only to curry favor with al-Qaeda, his brothers, his dead and commanding father. Ghalib couldn’t admit this even to himself, facing death. Instead, he pleaded again for his life.
“You have to believe me. I had nothing to do with your wife’s kidnapping.”
Arif checked his watch. 6:50 p.m. Where was Nadya? Speeding away from him.
“Tell me right now. What did you do?”
Ghalib paused to fumble for an answer, and it would be the thing that would get him killed. Arif gave up hope. He would go down from this room, out of this house past the shouting women and boys in the courtyard, the killer of their sayyid. Go where, he did not know.
Drained, burdened by his loss of everything, he tightened his grip on the Makarov. Arif changed his mind, not about killing Ghalib but about escaping afterward. He’d stay in the mabraz, smoke the last of the water pipe, and surrender when the police came. He’d be sent back to the Kingdom, where the prince would keep his word. Little matter.
Suddenly Ghalib gushed.
“I betrayed you.”
Ghalib worked his hands, rising to his knees before the pistol, throwing everything into his confession.
“I got your cell phone number when you called me. I gave it to bin Rajab. Before he blew himself up in front of Abd al-Aziz, he was supposed to dial your number. Yes? Did this happen?”
The ringing phone, the hang-up. A commonplace death knell, nothing to alert Arif. He ground his teeth. “It did.”
The Empty Quarter Page 17
